If you’re going to throw your hat into the operatic arena, you’d better have the stomach for a long fight.
Composer Lewis Spratlan was the recipient of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Music for a concert version of Act II of his three-act opera “Life Is a Dream.” Spratlan had actually composed the work between 1975 and 1978, on a commission from New Haven Opera. But while he was at work on the piece, New Haven Opera ceased to exist. It wasn’t until 2000 that Act II was first heard at Amherst College (where Spratlan taught) and then Harvard University. The complete opera would be heard at Santa Fe Opera for the first time only in 2010.
Spratlan composed a second opera, “Earthrise” for San Francisco Opera. His third, “Architect,” a chamber opera about Louis I. Kahn, was released on Navona Records in 2013. There’s also a fourth opera, “Midi,” which transplants the Medea story to the French Caribbean.
A recipient of a number of fellowships from Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Bogliasco, NEA, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and MacDowell, among others, Spratlan also produced significant orchestral, chamber, choral, and instrumental works.
He is remembered by his students for his empathy and his generosity. Not one to impose his own aesthetic values, he allowed his pupils to develop their own compositional voices, but on a firm musical foundation, always with a consideration of structure and technique and an historical awareness of what came before.
Spratlan died on February 9. He was 82 years-old. R.I.P.
Spratlan on “Life Is a Dream”
“Invasion,” his response to the war in Ukraine
“Bangladesh”
“When Crows Gather”
Characteristically fine album from Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP)
“Vespers Cantata: Hesperus is Phosphorus,” a truly lovely work composed for The Crossing and Network for New Music
In conversation with Frank J. Oteri
His obituary on legacy.com
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